Like Obama, Hebah entered Harvard law already a world traveller. The US citizen of Egyptian extraction landed at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion recently to study land disputes facing the Arab Bedouin community.

But airport security officials weren't having it.

According to the Harvard paper, Hebah's laptop and cell phone were seized and searched. But that wasn't satisfying enough, so an ultimatum was delivered: log us into your email accounts, or you will be deported and banned from ever entering Israel.

Hebah refused and faced the consequences. She was put on a plane back to the States, unable to conduct her research.

Al Jazeera has reported about how Israeli authorities have been denying NGO workers access into Israel and the Palestinian territories.

The prestigious Reut Institute, which issued the report, is headed by an erudite mover-and-shaker named Gidi Grinstein, a lawyer who also attended Harvard.

The Reut Study is comprehensive, and deserves reading in full. But I seriously doubt Grinstein (whom I've known for nearly a decade) would advocate deportation of visiting scholars and field researchers who refuse to let Israeli cybersleuths sign into their Harvard/Gmail acccounts.

On the positive side, at least US immigration officials welcomed Hebah home without incident.